Ad of the Day: Axe

Tom Kuntz and BBH bring inspired pandemonium to the launch spot for the brand's first women's fragrance

An Axe fragrance for men and women? Supported by an Axe campaign that isn't aggressively, compulsively misogynistic? The world must be coming to an end.

In fact, that's exactly what seems to be happening in Bartle Bogle Hegarty's launch spot for Axe Anarchy, the first fragrance in the brand's history with a version for ladies as well as dudes. Axe has long been known, and relentlessly bashed, for "giving men the edge in the mating game" (their words)—which in the advertising has always meant portraying women as brainless, sex-driven fools unable to resist throwing themselves at the Axe-using men in their midst. The introduction of a women's fragrance levels the playing field, and lets BBH finally portray both sexes as sex-crazed imbeciles, free to objectify each other equally in willfully mutual attraction—in what turns out to be the most absurdly romantic campaign Axe has ever produced.

Taking their cues from the product name, BBH and director Tom Kuntz use the 60-second spot to illustrate the apocalyptic repercussions of such unbridled passion. Lust is blind, it quickly becomes clear, as the couples, oblivious to all but each other, unleash all sorts of accidental violence around them. Kuntz, a master of the absurd, nicely ratchets up the mayhem until, at the end, helicopters have to be called in to the city, which is now literally burning up.

Lots of the comic violence is directed pseudo-sadistically at the ultimate in innocent bystanders—a man in a wheelchair rolls into the street, as his nurse forgets about him; and a dog (in the wonderfully awful print ad below) is about to get chewed up by a Weed Whacker as its owner takes a shine to a landscaper. Backed by Elvis's "Can't Help Falling in Love," the slapstick humor and gleeful pandemonium are infectious, not a term often associated with this brand—which almost seems like it's reveling at the chance to finally move beyond its icky roots. (Well, not entirely beyond them—the crowdsourced soft porn of its graphic-novel idea is right in line with the brand's past. But, you know, baby steps.)

"When we set about exploring what the world would be like with an Axe for him and an Axe for her, we started by dialing up the romance," says BBH creative director David Kolbusz. "More romance became romance at the expense of all else. Romance at the expense of all else became a descent into chaos. With a burning clown."